I caught this story over at Twitchy.

It links to this story at the Daily Breeze: Taking aim: gophers in cross hairs at Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes.

Seems that a grounds keeper was shooting at gophers.  Given the look of the rifle in the pictures, it is my educated guess that it is a break action pellet gun.  The way the barrel flares out past the forend of the stock is the giveaway.

The legality of doing this in California is dubious, even with a pellet gun, so there might be some problems for the grounds keeper in the future.

Being associated with a Trump golf course, the internet had to opine.

Yes, yes, we get it.  Trump is evil, hunting is evil, Trump and his family must like killing innocent woodland critters because they are evil sadists.

Welcome to an understanding of nature and economics when all you have been exposed to is Disney movies.

According to the Daily Breeze article, Trump has invested over $250 million into that course.

Gophers and other burrowing animals can wreck a golf course.  Traditional methods of dealing with these types of animals is to bait and poison them.  That can be effective, but the most common gopher bait is Strychnine, which can cause secondary poisoning.  Repellents are less effective.

Let me tell you about prairie dogs in South Dakota.  They are a nuisance animal of the highest order.  A prairie dog town can ruin grazing land.  The dogs dig burrows.  If a cow puts a foot in a dog hole, it can break a leg.  Then you have to shoot the cow.

Prairie dogs also spread bubonic plague and other diseases.

So ranchers deal with the dogs by letting people shoot them.  No issues with laying poison to be eaten by other animals.

I’m not a hunter, I don’t like to do it, but I have no issue what-so-ever with shooting nuisance animals.  They spread disease and ruin property values.

Letting a grounds keeper end a gopher or ground squirrel with a .177 projectile at 1,000 fps is humane and economical.

Do these people really care if a Trump golf course loses revenue because it has a pest problem?

What if people had to get laid off because the reduced revenue?

What if a golfer twisted an ankle stepping in a gopher hole?

Nope, because shooting animals is bad and done by evil people.

What else would you expect from the same people who saw a video of disease infected vermin showing no fear of people and turned it into a folk hero?

Let Trump build a Golf Course in the South.  When we get invaded with giant nuisance animals, we deal with them with suppressed 22s.

Politico came out with an article on the Miller/Acosta spat, The Ugly History of Stephen Miller’s ‘Cosmopolitan’ Epithet.

Of course, Politico has it go back to Soviet Anti-Semitism and therefore Miller is a white supremacist, QED so it Trump, yada yada yada…

Politico hits the nail on the head when it comes to defining the connotation of ‘Cosmopolitan.’

So what is a “cosmopolitan”? It’s a cousin to “elitist,” but with a more sinister undertone. It’s a way of branding people or movements that are unmoored to the traditions and beliefs of a nation, and identify more with like-minded people regardless of their nationality. (In this sense, the revolutionary pamphleteer Thomas Paine might have been an early American cosmopolitan, when he declared: “The world is my country; all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”). In the eyes of their foes, “cosmopolitans” tend to cluster in the universities, the arts and in urban centers, where familiarity with diversity makes for a high comfort level with “untraditional” ideas and lives.

For a nationalist, these are fighting words. Your country is your country; your fellow citizens are your brethren; and your country’s traditions—religious and otherwise— should be yours. A nation whose people—especially influential people—develop other ties undermine national strength, and must be repudiated.

That’s 110% right, fuckers.  The problem is Politico is Cosmopolitan so embraces that attitude rather than see why it upsets nationalistic conservatives.

Here is sort of the stereotypical idea of a cosmopolitan person:

A moneyed individual.  Perhaps a famous professor or a progressive businessman.  He likes to go to fancy cafes for wine bars and sit and drink and wax philosophical with other like minded, wealthy, progressives with the sort of self righteous hubris that only the erudite progressive can have.  He feels a closeness to other like minded, wealthy, progressives and could/does feel at home at a fancy cafe or wine bar in New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Rome, etc.  He is a citizen of the world.

So far Politico and I agree.

The problem is, he doesn’t feel at home in Indiana, Nebraska, Texas, or Alabama.  He feels no connection to the denizens of the Rust Belt, Bible Belt, Bread Basket, or Great Plains.  He is an insufferable prick who believes his erudite, progressive, education makes him superior – both morally and intellectually – to the salt-of-the-earth hard working Americans.  He doesn’t understand people outside his bubble, and doesn’t want to.

If that was it, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.  Let him stay in his bubble.  They don’t.  Self assured in their superiority, they want to craft laws and policy that feels good for wealthy, progressives in New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Rome, etc., but what works for the jet-setting Cosmopolitan doesn’t work for the guy with the pickup truck and no passport in Middle America.  Mr. Cosmo is more than happy to sell out the interests of his fellow citizens, who he is (even if he doesn’t realize it or like it) tied to economically, for a bubble of international elitists.

When the elite from New York or San Francisco cares more about the policy option of another wealthy elite from London or Paris than the opinion of the farmer in Nebraska or the factor worker in Indiana, you get problems and resentment.

This is what Politco wants to ignore.

When the Acostas of the US want an immigration policy that makes the Acostas of London and Paris applaud, but hurts the Joe Sixpack trying to make a living in Western Pennsylvania or Ohio, it’s not unreasonable to tell the Acostas to sit down and shut up because they are being cosmopolitan jackasses.

I don’t believe that Miller was blowing an Anti-Semitic dog whistle.

He was reminding Acosta that we just suffered eight years of Cosmopolitan Obama, who crafted policy based on what his peers in Europe would think about it rather than how Middle America would benefit from it, and Trump wasn’t going to do that shit anymore.

If Acosta wants to live in his Comopolitan bubble, with his head shoulder deep up his own ass, sipping fine wine through an enema bag, let him.  As long as he stays there.  The moment he wants to make national policy fit his view from inside his colon on 5th Avenue, he deserves to be called out.

Over at the Moms Demand Action Facebook page, I caught this.

A trans woman was murdered in Atlanta.

The response from the MDA comment peanut gallery was predicable.

It’s all Trump’s and the NRA’s fault.

Some of the comments makes me wonder if these people can read.

Not past the headline apparently.  If they did they’d of read:

It is not currently clear what the motive was behind Dangerfield’s murder and whether or not she was targeted because she is transgender.

“At this time we don’t have anything that’s telling us that, but we’re not ruling out any possible motive,” Patterson said.

No evidence it was a hate crime.

The victim was shot at the South Hampton Estates in College Park, GA.  College Park is a city, surrounded by Atlanta, which was listed as a murder capital in 2016.  College Park is a high crime area just outside Hartsfield-Jackson airport.

So right now what we are looking at as a person shot in a high crime neighborhood of a high crime city.

The article ends with this statement:

Thus far, at least 16 transgender people have been murdered in the United States alone this year.

Wow, that has to be…. I don’t know.

According to GLAAD “2016 was the deadliest year on record for transgender people” with a total of 21 trans people murdered.

In 2014, the CDC reports 15,872 people were the victims of homicides.

In 2015, the number was 15,696.

2016 is supposed to have a increase in murders.  The numbers are not available yet, but lets make a conservative estimate of 15,500 to 16,000.

That means of 21 murders is between 0.131% and 0.135% of all homicides.

The transgender population of America is roughly 1.4 million or 0.6%.

Going by those figures, trans people are underrepresented in homicides.

GLAAD noted that half of the 21 trans victims are people of color.  According to the FBI, in 2015, 53.1% of murder victims were black and 2.8% were “other” races, putting the “POC” category at 55.9% of murder victims.

Trans homicides are proportional by race to the general population.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not excusing any of these murders.  16,000 murders is way too many.  It is the identity politics nature of the coverage that is upsetting.

“OMG, it is a massacre of trans people and it’s all Trump’s fault!!!”  Even when the numbers don’t support that.  The narrative has to be maintained and Moms Demand Action is going to do everything to push the narrative.

Miguel covered the story of Professor Charles K. Smith of San Antonio College showing up on the first day of Texas campus carry in body armor.

The professor told the media he did this because “I was just saying I don’t feel safe.”

No.  What he did was grandstanding bullshit.

The whole argument against campus carry is (paraphrasing) “if a professor says something that offends a student with a CCW, the student will lose his/her cool and shoot the professor.”  Hence the “free speech concerns” that are raised by the anti-CCW crowd.

If Professor Charles K. Smith really was afraid of offending a student during a geography lecture, so much that student would shoot him, why would he antagonize his students by wearing body armor to class?  That just screams “I don’t trust you not to be a bunch of trigger happy reactionaries.”

If he was so afraid of his students being so unhinged that they would turn violent over a lecture, why did he even teach?  Seeing as how every day before August 2, they could have reacted violently without a gun, just like the baseball bat wielding snowflakes at Evergreen State.

It wasn’t about his personal safety.  It was about making an anti-gun statement.

Here’s the thing.

Back in 1996, after the Port Arthur Massacre, Australian Prime Minister John Howard gave a speech to a crowd of firearms enthusiasts and hunters in which he advocated for a gun ban.  He did so, with a bullet proof vest poorly concealed under his jacket.  This enraged the crowed, who were deeply offended that the Prime Minister would just assume that a bunch of hunting and shooting clubs would respond with violence.  The media took the backlash of law abiding gun owners offended by being addressed by the Prime Minister in body armor as clear evidence that they were unhinged people who needed to have their guns taken away.

It was a character assassination of Australian gun owners.

I don’t know if Professor Smith knew about the John Howard incident, but I believe he was attempting the same sort of thing: provoking a reaction from law abiding gun owners to prove that he was right to be afraid of them, after insulting them to their faces from a position of authority.

Christopher Hayes of MSNBC was shocked by the fact that the majority of Americans do want immigrants to learn English.

I can understand why this is so shocking to him. 

It’s not like he has conversations with these people that are longer than “wash windows” while pointing and pantomiming. 

When the help is not supposed to talk, does it really matter what language they speak?

I think Ronald Reagan described Liberal policy best when he said this:

I saw some stuff on line last night the really makes me wonder what universe Liberals live in.

Ben Shapiro debated Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks.  (Note: if you want to create a hip, liberal news show, don’t name it after a political party that was responsible for the Armenian genocide.)

They debated taxes, when Cenk said this:

I have heard this before.  According to Liberals, the great, booming economy of the US in the 1950’s was BECAUSE the peak income tax rate was 90%, not in spite of it.  Forget that Western Europe and Japan had been bombed flat, Eastern Europe and Russia were under total Stalinist Communism, China was starving under Maoism, and the US was the only Western nation left with a manufacturing capacity that wasn’t having to be rebuilt from WWII.  It was the tax rate that made America successful and if we just went back to a peak 90% income tax for the rich, America will be great again.

They believe this.

MS-13 is the most deadly gang in the US.  They are known for their brutality and raping witnesses to death.  They are killing their way across Long Island.

Trump and Sessions have vowed to fight MS-13.

According to Liberals, fighting MS-13 is emboldening the gang.  The best way to fight them is not antagonize them and remember that MS-13 is a youth gang for immigrant kids (that likes to chop off hands and heads) and remind America that immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than citizens (which isn’t true, they just conflate legal and illegal immigrants to cover the facts).

These are, of course, the same people who said banning people from nations overrun with terrorists is a recruiting tool for ISIS and will embolden terrorism.

On every single point they are wrong.

“If we raise the peak income tax to 90%, the economy will thrive.”

“If we try to stop a deadly, drug and sex trafficking gang, they will grow in power.”

“If we try and prevent terrorists from entering the country, we’ll make ourselves less safe.”

They seem to think they can make America great by taxing the pants off of law abiding citizens while letting violent gangs and radical Islamist run amok.

What color is the sky in the world these people live in?

Who can believe this?  It is ludicrous.

I’m beginning to believe that it’s not Ronald Reagan that described these people accurately, but Weird Al Yankovic when he sang:

Everything you know is wrong
Black is white, up is down and short is long
And everything you thought was just so
Important doesn’t matter

Everything you know is wrong
Just forget the words and sing along
All you need to understand is
Everything you know is wrong

Zinnia Jones is a progressive, trans, social justice activist and clearly insane person.

She posted something about gun control on her twitter, which I hat to get the long way around because she doesn’t post publicly.

Taking guns away from people would be uneventful?

Really?

This person is clearly confused about everything in her life.

I live in Alabama, where 57.2% of people own guns.  Lets say they get banned at the federal level.

I know it can’t happen, but lets say it did.  Trump gets impeached.  Hillary gets the presidency because she won the popular vote.  Gorsuch is taken of SCOTUS because Turmp didn’t count and his position gets filled by Obama, and they overturn they decide the 2A means that ONLY state sponsored militias can own guns.

Who is going to enforce the gun ban?  Alabama police?  They are going to go door to door and take guns away from family and neighbors.  How many warrants will they need to search every home for the guns that weren’t lost in boating accidents?

The Alabama National Guard?  Same thing as above.

They will have to send law enforcement from DC down here to do that job.

Let me tell you something.  There are plenty of people down here that sit around and fantasize about shooting an invading army of northern bureaucrats to get revenge for what the Army of the Potomac did to great-great-grandpappy.

You go right ahead and send a bunch of Yankees down south to take our guns away.

I don’t think “uneventful” would be the word to describe what happens.

You’d have an easier time convincing these people that a man should not refuse to date a “woman” with a penis, as you would that he should hand over his guns to DC bureaucrats without a fight.